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That government is wasteful has been a rallying cry from Reagan onward. Republicans have gleefully been cutting waste since then, so we’ve had nearly four decades of intense scrutiny of government waste. There is very little left! While each new finding of any waste is trumpeted from the hilltops, no mention is made of the numerous agencies and offices which are operating on shoestring budgets and, in many cases, operating at low efficiency because they are too starved of cash to do their jobs effectively. This is the two-pronged attack, a maniacally evil strategy from
the brains of the John Birch Society, the Koch brothers and their minion ‘think’ tanks, and Grover Norquist. They wish to institute their libertarian paradise, but what gets in their way is that most Americans don’t actually share their desires. Most Americans tend to favor the kind of smart policies that balance the needs of enterprise with the needs of society - laws that harness the engine of capitalism to work broadly in service of everyone. Only by driving a wedge in between the American populace and government, and between the non-union worker and the union worker, and between the middle class and the poor, and between the poor and the immigrant - to the point that everyone is now against everyone else - could they succeed in creating such visceral hatred so wide and so deep in the populace that we would have no sense of society left. When we cease to feel like we’re all in this together, we cease to feel a responsibility for the common good, when we show no concern for the pillaging of the commons, we laugh haughtily at the misfortune of others, we joke about the failure of our institutions and collectively we stick our heads in the sand and turn to salve our sorrows with the solace of drugs or numb ourselves with our mindless entertainment, we step closer to the now-inevitable collapse of our great experiment in democracy, our once powerful leadership fallen to depths of ridicule and our empire crumbled. Those rich men who directed our demise might initially celebrate the arrival of their libertarian paradise, but with a limping husk of a state left, even a minimal order won’t last for long, and their wealth - in money that has little lingering value won’t shield them from the pains of society collapsed. Their land is only theirs if recognized by a government, and if property rights are respected. I suspect that it won’t be long until all are consumed in anarchy, followed by formation of groups of violent masses, led by ideologues who commandeer what bits of military hardware they can grab. |
Their land is only theirs if they can secure it from foreign aggression through a functional nuclear deterrent. However, operating a nuclear deterrent is a significant Big Government endeavor that is unlikely attainable by those chasing the so-called libertarian paradise.
That is the consequence of tearing down the government, if you tear down enough of it, you're not a patriot, you're literally handing it over to those you would call our enemies.